New leaked images of the BlackBerry Venice

It’s no secret that BlackBerry is developing its own Android-powered smartphone. Thanks to numerous renders, images and leaked specifications, we already have a pretty good idea as to what the phone might look like. In case you needed more proof, we’ve just obtained some new hands-on photos of the unannounced BlackBerry Venice, showing off the device’s chassis, sliding keyboard and some software features.

I still can’t believe it looks like we’re finally going to get the keyboard slider that we deserve. I’m almost too afraid posting about it will jinx it.

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My previous phone (not a smartphone, I might add) had a sliding keyboard like this. I find it to be more intuitive. You’re already going to be holding the phone upright, like this, anyway, so why not have the keyboard slide that way? Additionally, having it slide from the side makes the keyboard very long, and most people’s thumbs d do not have that much reach (assuming this is a ~5″ screen).

Personally, I find swiping so easy and natural that I’m convinced a hardware keyboard is unnecessary. A hardware keyboard requires both hands for something that I can easily do with one. Add to that how far we’ve come with voice recognition and the whole thing is moot.

In portrait, the onscreen keyboard takes up maybe 30% of the screen, which is only 2 inches or so on most 6″ tall phones. You have lots of space for text and context in portrait. Having a physical keyboard in this orientation doesn’t save you much. This orientation also forces your wrists to bend awkwardly if using both thumbs to type (and is why I can’t play games on the portrait Gameboys for more 20-30 minutes).

In landscape, though, you only have 2″ of vertical space to play with on most phones. An onscreen keyboard takes up 50% or more of that space, and most implementations include a full-screen mode so you can’t see what you a responding to when the keyboard is onscreen. A physical keyboard in this orientation doubles your usable screen space. It’s also much easier on the wrists to hold a wide device and type with the thumbs. You also get more space to include all the punctuation keys, control keys, cursor keys, etc.

Not to mention, a vertical slider adds 2″ or more to the vertical height of a device, and tends to create top-heavy devices that require more wrist strength to control (which also leads to wrist fatigue).

The problem with landscape sliders is that you actually end up having to use the device in landscape mode. Portrait is so much better for viewing/editing documents.

Maybe if you are zoomed right out and want to see the whole page with itty-bitty characters. However, if you want to see an entire line of text all at once, at a decent size, landscape works better.

In portrait mode, I can either have 40 columns of normal-sized text in a terminal, or 80 columns of text I can’t read (on an LG G2 @ 1080×1920). Sure, there’s 50+ lines onscreen, but it’s either half-lines, or tiny print.

In landscape mode, I can get a full 80-column terminal with a readable font size. Sure, it’s only 10-15 lines, but they’re full-sized lines, at a readable font size.

But who had that use case? A phone is not a productivity device. It’s for quick tasks. Most people aren’t going to be ssh’ing into their server with a phone (I know how painful that can be). The keyboard is for text and e-mail, both of which work perfectly well with dynamic word wrapping.

But who had that use case? A phone is not a productivity device. It’s for quick tasks. Most people aren’t going to be ssh’ing into their server with a phone (I know how painful that can be). The keyboard is for text and e-mail, both of which work perfectly well with dynamic word wrapping.

Your kidding right, everyone in my department including myself use our Blackberry Passports to monitor trades. Info that can only be retrieved by using a terminal app and starting Python scripts. Heck, I even start compile jobs using my Passport, than I just minimize the terminal and let it run in the background. Not painful at as I use the text shortcuts that are linked to command statements, something the BlackBerry does very well. In fact I can do most things faster with my Passport than I can with my laptop using these shortcuts. Logging into a server and starting my monitoring tools literally takes a single word typed.

Ther terminal app I use is part of a collection of utilities built into a single app called, IT Manager, which also has things like RDP and FTP client. This tool further improves on the text shortcuts by storing every single server and their credentials with single button launch. Even when I’m already logged into a server, I still have to login into many servers on the internal server, I just click on the name and I’m in.

The reason why you haven’t have good xperience using these utilities with your phone is because their not really designed for it, especially the iPhone, the BlackBerry and why government entities such as the NSA use them were designed for such things.

It seems like they should release 3 similar Android phones. Landscape, vertical, and one without a physical keyboard.

Then do the same for a group of lower spec/lower budget phones and it gives them 6 Android phones in their lineup which doesn’t seem like too many really.

The versions without the sliding keyboard can have a larger battery to make up some of the size/weight difference so the phones would all be pretty similar aside from the keyboard preference and R&D wouldn’t be too bad.

The problem is they need to go back in time and do this about 8 years ago because software keyboards (and voice recognition) have really come a long way. I feel like Swype helped put the nail in the coffin of physical keyboards.

The problem is they need to go back in time and do this about 8 years ago because software keyboards (and voice recognition) have really come a long way. I feel like Swype helped put the nail in the coffin of physical keyboards.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, gesture-based typing only works for texting and tweeting in plain English. Try to add any special characters, numbers, or punctuation, and gesture-typing is more trouble than it’s worth. I say this as someone who uses gesture typing all the time … when texting and tweeting.

When trying to get any actual work done on my phone, though, I load up Hacker’s Keyboard and use that. It doesn’t come close to replacing a physical keyboard with a proper key layout and keymap, though.

VX ConnectBot and the Sony Xperia pro slider keyboard were pretty much perfect for actually using the phone for real work (anything done via SSH). And it worked wonders for editing documents on-the-go.

That looks awesome. Not too thrilled that the hardware keyboard has a different layout than the stock Android virtual keyboard we’ve seen in other photos. That could lead to confusion when trying to access punctuation or number keys.

Not like this. Google changing keyboard layouts happened over many years, and most people would only have a learning curve when they bought a new phone. With the Venice, you would be changing keyboard layouts every time you switched from the virtual keyboard to the physical keys. It would have been better to 1) port the software keyboard from the Z30 over to Android with the same layout as the physical keys or 2) mimic the Passport and have only QWERTY physical keys with software punctuation/numbers, and then mimic this layout on the virtual keyboard as well.

Not like this. Google changing keyboard layouts happened over many years, and most people would only have a learning curve when they bought a new phone. With the Venice, you would be changing keyboard layouts every time you switched from the virtual keyboard to the physical keys. It would have been better to 1) port the software keyboard from the Z30 over to Android with the same layout as the physical keys or 2) mimic the Passport and have only QWERTY physical keys with software punctuation/numbers, and then mimic this layout on the virtual keyboard as well.

AOSP keyboard in Android 2.x is slightly different from AOSP keyboard in Android 4.x (latter has long-press symbols). Many phones shipped with the former and were upgraded to the latter.

AOSP keyboard in Android 4.x is slightly different from Google Keyboard that shipped with Android 4.4 or 5.0 (forget which one it came with first) (Google Keyboard only has long-press numbers, not symbols). Many phones shipped with the former and were upgraded to the latter.

AOSP keyboard in Android 4.3 is very different from AOSP keyboard in Android 5.x (all the long-press symbols changed). Many phones shipped with one and were upgraded to the latter.

No new phone required, just a normal OS upgrade. It was very jarring on the LG G2 going between AOSP-based ROMs and getting all kinds of different keyboard layouts.

The difficulty with a slider is you are forced to ‘fatten’ the phone to fit it. That is a compromise I can accept. Hopefully they have managed to do it at a reasonable weight. This is particularly important with a vertical slider as you don’t want it ending up top heavy. After all this, the phone will live or die on price. This needs to aim at the 300 pound mark to gain traction. Blackberry just don’t have the brand pull they once did to go top end against Apple… yet

That is part of the problem too, the expensive flagship phones bring in the lions share of profits for companies and the cheaper phones are very low margin.

In order to pay for R&D costs it mostly requires having a successful flagship phone with high enough margins. They might release different phones at different price points but the future of the company probably depends on finding success at high end price points.

If their Android build is good enough they might be able to sell a version without a keyboard too. It sounds counterintuitive but back when a lot of companies used BBM the company policy for picking a phone used to be “You can pick any phone as long as it’s blackberry”.

I’m sure lots of people today would opt for an android phone with no physical keyboard in that situation but they already blew their opportunity to convert most of these organizations that have already long since moved on from the BBM days.

I’m in the same boat, if this were running BB10, I’d buy one, but I already have enough android devices. And work at one point provided me with a Q10, and while the hardware keyboard on it is nice, I wish I had more screen space to really see the great OS. Why on earth people setting for non-unified messaging is beyond me. The BB10 is awesome for unified messaging center, much like the Nokia N900 and N9.

Separate apps for all of it is just horrible.

I’m kind of on the fence about if the keyboard should be landscape or not though, I love my N900’s set up because it can work as a mini computer.

There has been lots of speculation at Crackberry about the future of BB10 even before the Android phones were leaked. Chen telling developers to focus on Android and not BB10, the Qt5 port to BlackBerry 10 being discarded, no announcement about an upcoming 10.4 release, etc. Again, lots of speculation, but given the upcoming Venice slider, the leaked video of the new Silver Edition Passport running Android, and the partnerships between BlackBerry/Google and separately BlackBerry/Samsung seem to point to a transition to Android.

I was late to the BB10 game. I built a Q10 from broken parts and loved it enough that I payed full price for the Passport when it was released. (Later I bought a Classic brand new, but sent it back for a refund because of build quality issues) The gestures and hub I thought made it the best mobile OS around. I can only hope that the Android distribution BlackBerry releases 1) remains current above all, and 2) retains some of the gesture-based interface that made BB10 awesome to use.

Hardware keyboards seem to be the new external floppy drive of 1999. Something we ‘think’ is a must because the proposed alternative isn’t a ‘good enough’ or ‘better’ replacement.

The reality seems to be that on-screen keyboards have gotten very good and people have gotten used to typing with two thumbs/digits and the screens have gotten big enough that it’s not consuming 1/2 the screen anymore.

All of my virtual keyboards support swype style typing, yet more often than not I find myself not using it because it doesn’t seem to ever want to pick the word I am trying to use. Though it has on occasion given me some laughs, like when trying to type a female friend’s name and itcomes out as Nipples.

On my Nokia (WP) it works incredibly well in both English and Dutch. If it doesn’t recognise a word (like my name) I just add it. It seems to me that a quick scan of the most common words used in send emails and other messaging tools would create an incredibly accurate dictionary

I think if you went back in time to 2008 and hired homeless people to run RIM/BlackBerry they would have done a better job. The company is only worth like 3% of what it was in mid 2007.

Had they released this back when software keypads were still not very good and tons of companies had existing agreements/contracts for RIM/BB they could have made a dent in the market but now some of they keyboards like Swype are downright good and speech to text it both good and improving with massive R&D arms race behind it that will make it better over the coming years.

Most people have already made the transition away from physical keyboards on phones and the Android phones that had keyboards have mostly faded into irrelevancy. Now they are entering a crowded market with falling margins with a product that came almost 10 years too late.

I think the design looking similar to an Samsung Edge is no coincidence. I think this new phone is actually a Samsung/Blackberry partnership phone which will be running a KNOX edition.

Samsung have been happy to offer rebrand hardware in the past (Nook) and, to my mind, would benefit both sides by allowing the inclusion of the blackberry keyboard. Expect to see some blackberry patented ideas popping up in Samsungs soon

Personally I’ll stick with BB10 as long as they keep developing / supporting it. Whilst it’s true that I may miss some apps (mostly games), the BB10 experience is so good that moving to another OS would be too much of a pain for me. And I have no desire to send my data to Google endlessly. Nor frankly any need of their services beyond perhaps gmail which I already get integrated into the Hub.

There was an article over at nerdberry.net that suggested that the phone would come with the option (on startup) of installing either BB10 or Android. And that the user could reset this if they so chose (so not dual booting, but a choice of one of two OS flavours at any given time)

That would be pretty clever, although it may well be just that, a rumour. I suspect so.

For those people who like Android and the benefits of its massive app ecosystem, this phone could be very attractive, especially if it ships with the BB Hub and virtual keyboard, both of which are truly superb.